In a moment or two we had come level with the cart, and the horse bolted. The man leading it was thrown violently to the ground, and the cart went over him. Luckily he tucked in his head and drew up his feet, or he would have been shockingly hurt, perhaps killed. He lay a moment or two, half stunned with the shock, while the horse galloped away, dragging after him the swaying cart, the two women screaming at the top of their voices. The man driving managed to pull up the frightened animals some way down the road, and the people in the cart scrambled out to help their fallen friend, who meanwhile had picked himself up, and pale with fright and passion, blood streaming down hisface, was limping after the car gesticulating violently.
Payne had not turned his head, and the moment that a startled "Oh!" from Miss Randolph told him there had been an accident he put on speed, clearly with the intention of avoiding a row. The injured man stooped to pick up a stone. At the same instant Miss Randolph, in her most imperious manner (and she can be imperious), commanded Payne to stop instantly and go back. "But we shall have the whole pack of them on us like wolves," he objected. "Go back!" she repeated, stamping her little foot. "I won't hurt a man and drive away." Suddenly Payne pulled up, and putting in the reverse, we ran slowly into the midst of the horde of angry peasants, swollen now by many others who had been passing along the crowded road.
As we backed into that sea of scowling faces I thought of the various revolutions France has seen. It was like stirring up a wasps' nest. Everyone was yelling at once. In the front rank stood the man who had been knocked down, his trousers cut to tatters. He had lashed himself into such a fury that he had become almost incoherent, and the flood of speech which rushed from his white lips was more like the yells of an animal than the ordered utterance of a human being. By his side were the two women who had been in the cart, both sobbing and screaming, while everyone else in the angry mob shouted simultaneously. Aunt Mary went very pale; Payne looked upon his handiwork with a sulky grin; but Miss Randolph took the business in hand with thegreatest pluck. She had whisked off her veil and faced the people boldly, her grey eyes meeting theirs, her face white, save for a bright pink spot on either cheek. At sight of her beauty the clamour died down, and in the lull she spoke to the man who had been thrown under the horse.
"I am very sorry you are hurt," she said, "and shall be pleased to give you something to buy yourself new clothes. Are you injured anywhere?"
At the sound of her correct but foreign-sounding French someone in the crowd shouted out, "A bas les Anglais!" The girl drew herself up proudly and looked in the direction of the voice. She didn't try to excuse herself by denying England and claiming a nationality more popular in France, and I loved her more than ever for this reticence.
"Pay!" shouted the man who had been hurt, with one hand wiping a trickle of blood out of his eye, with the other thumping the mud-guard of the car. "Of course you shall pay. God only knows what injuries I have received.Mazette!I am all one ache. Ah, you pay well, or you do not go on!" He pressed closer to the car, and his friends closed in around him.
"Pay them, Molly! pay anything they ask!" quavered Aunt Mary, "or they will kill us! Oh, I always knew something like this was bound to happen! What a fool I was to leave my peaceful home and come to a country of thieves and murderers!"
"Don't be frightened, Aunt Mary," said the girl, with more patience for her relative's garrulous complaintsthan I had. Then she turned to me. "Brown, is that man much hurt?" she asked briskly.
"No," I replied. "He is merely scratched, and no doubt bruised. If he had any bones broken, any internal injury or severe strain, he couldn't rage about like a mad bull."
"Still, it was our fault," she said. "We ought to have stopped. His clothes are torn. How much ought we to pay?"
"Nothing at all," said Sherlock. "Don't you let yourself be blackmailed."
She didn't answer or look in his direction, thus emphasising the fact that she had asked her question of me, not of him.
"Fifty francs would be generous," I said, "to buy the fellow a new suit of clothes and pay for a bottle of liniment. With that to-morrow he would be thanking his stars for the accident. But as Mr. Payne was driving, hadn't you better let him talk to them? It isn't right that two men should stand by and let the burden fall on a lady."
"Youspeak to them, Brown; I give youcarte blanche," said she, and we faced the mob together.
"If you threaten us," I said, "you shall have nothing. We were going fast, but your horse is badly broken, and is more of a danger on the road than an automobile. If you behave yourself and tell your friends to do likewise, this lady wishes to give you fifty francs to buy new clothes in place of those which have suffered in this accident. But we don't intend to be bullied."
"Fifty francs!" shrieked the man. "Fifty francsfor a man's life! Bah! You aristocrats! Five hundred francs; not a sou less, or you do not stir from this place. Fifty francs!Mazette!"
"You are talking nonsense, and you know it," said I roughly. "Stand out of our way, or we will send for the police."
Now this was bluff, for the last thing to be desired was the presence of the police. I had been careful to get in Paris the necessarypermis de conduirefrom the Department of Mines, without which it is illegal to drive a motor vehicle of any sort in France. But I had heard Payne boasting to Miss Randolph that he never bothered himself about a lot of useless red tape; it was only milksops and amateurs who did that. I, as Brown, had kept "my master's" papers, but it would do more harm than good to our cause, should it come to an investigation, if I attempted to pass over my permit to Payne. Were the police to appear on the scene their first demand would be for papers, and if the man who had been driving were unable to produce any, not all our just complaints of the peasants' unlawful threats would help us. Payne would be liable to arrest and imprisonment; not only would he be heavily fined, but we should all be detained, perhaps for weeks; and as French magistrates have as strong a prejudice against the automobile as their English brothers, especially when the offender is a foreigner, it might go hard with everyone concerned. This would be a dismal interruption of our tour, and if I hadn't felt sure that the enemy would be in as great a funk of the police as we were, I wouldn't have ventured on so bold a bluff. I trembledinternally for an instant as to its success, but as usual in life and poker, it paid.
"No, you don't!" shouted not the one peasant, but many in chorus, as unlike the merry peasant-chorus of light opera as you can imagine. "We won't have the police. We attend to this affair ourselves."
And it began to look as if they meant to. "Give the five hundred francs, or you will be sorry!" they yelled, and again, in a second, they were all surging round us, threatening with their fists, snatching out their pocket-knives, and I saw things were getting hot. A French crowd barks a good deal before it bites, but this one had come to the biting stage. We were far from town and the police, even if the latter wouldn't have done us more harm than good. Here we had Miss Randolph and Miss Kedison. If Payne were as useless as I judged him, I was one man against forty.
The two ladies were still on the car. Payne had got off at first, but had slipped back when things began to be lively. I alone was on the ground, close to the bonnet, so that if needful I could protect the motor and Miss Randolph at the same time.
The crowd consulted an instant, then stampeded the car. Aunt Mary shrieked, and threw out her purse, as if she flung a live lamb to hungry wolves. The motor was going still, but to charge into the crowd might mean killing a dozen wretched peasants. It was out of the question, but something must be done, and now was the moment for doing it. One fellow tried to snatch a sable rug off Miss Kedison's knees; I struck his hand away, and sent him staggering.Then I yelled to Payne to get into thetonneauThere was no more pride left in him than in a rag, and he crawled over, like a dog. Meanwhile, I'd made up my mind what to do, and was going to try an experiment as our best chance to get out of the town without bloodshed.
I knew that a union which held the exhaust pipe in place on the silencer had been working loose. I grabbed a spanner out of the tool-box, and elbowing my way along the side of the car again, with two turns of the spanner loosened the union, pushed forward the throttle-lever in the steering-post, and gave the motor all its gas.
The thing was done in a quarter the time it's taken me to write of it, and you can guess the effect. Bang! bang! came a succession of explosions quick and pitiless as a Maxim gun. Those peasants gave way like wheat before the scythe. I don't doubt they thought they were shot and on the way to kingdom come; and before they'd time to find out their mistake I was up on the step, had seized the steering-wheel, and started the car. We were on a slight decline, and the good steed bounded forward at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. An instant later I slipped in the fourth, and we were going forty-five.
When the enemy saw how they'd been tricked, which they did in about six seconds, they were after us with a howl. A shower of stones fell harmlessly on the road behind us, angry yells were drowned in the hideous noise of the exhaust. We could afford to laugh at the thought of pursuit. But there was another side to the story. Now that there was noone on the spot to complain of their threats of violence, they could safely apply to the police and make a bold stroke for vengeance, just as we had for escape. However, there was no use in thinking of that for the moment; I had done the best I could and must go on doing it. No normal tympanum could stand the racket of the exhaust for long, and Miss Randolph and Miss Kedison were sitting with their hands over their ears, the lower part of Aunt Mary's face under her mask expressing a comical horror. I caught sight of her visage when I stopped the car (which I did as soon as we were beyond danger of pursuit) to fasten up the silencer again; and it was all I could do not to laugh.
The fastening-up business was an affair of two or three minutes, and at first the three sat in shocked silence, their heads dazed by the late ear-splitting din. Then, the cool peace of welcome silence was broken by Mr. Payne. "I consider," he said stiffly to Miss Randolph, "that yourmécanicienhas behaved with unwarrantable insolence in ordering me--"
"And I consider that he saved the situation," cut in themécanicien'smistress.
"I acted for what I thought the best, miss; there wasn't much time to decide," said I, with a sleek humility which I assume on occasions. "If I have given offence, I am sorry," I went on, looking at her and not at Payne.
"You haven't given offence," she said. "I am sure Mr. Payne, when he comes to reflect, will see that you did yeoman's service. But what is tohappen now? I suppose we're not safe from trouble yet, and we don't deserve to be."
I thought it rather sporting of her to say "we," when all the bother was due to the conceit and cocksureness of one person.
"No, miss, we don't deserve to be, if you'll excuse the liberty," I meekly replied. "We had no business charging along a crowded road the way we did. I'm sure, until to-day, we've never had anything but courtesy from people of all classes. It isn't often French peasants misbehave themselves, and to-day most of the wrong was on our side, though it's true that their horse was skittish; and being market-day, I daresay they'd taken a little more red wine than was good for them. The wine of this country is apt to go to the head."
I spoke to Miss Randolph, butatJimmy, especially when I gave that dig about the wine. I finished my tirade and my work on the silencer at the same time, and it was then that my triumph came. Instead of getting back on the car, I stood still in the road.
"What are you waiting for?" asked Miss Randolph.
"For Mr. Payne to take his place in the driver's seat," said I.
At this he half jumped up in thetonneau, but Miss Randolph hurriedly exclaimed, "Oh, I think you had better drive for a while, Brown. I want to talk to you, and ask you what to do, and what will happen next." Little Lord Fauntleroy, with every Sherlockian characteristic temporarily obliterated, sat down again in thetonneaupouting.
We had not wasted five minutes, and now we sprang forward at a good speed for Carcassonne.
"What will happen next," I said, answering Miss Randolph's question, "may be this. If the peasants are angry enough to take the trouble and risk, all they have to do is to go to the police-station in the nearest village and give information against us, when a wire with a description of us and the car will raise the whole country so that we shall not be safe anywhere."
"Oh, my gracious!" the poor child exclaimed. "What are we to do? Aunt Mary and I have other hats and jackets and things in our car-luggage. Couldn't we change, so as to look quite different, and buy a lot of-of Aspinall, or something in the next village before they've had time to give the alarm, and paint the poor car a bright scarlet? Then we should get through and no one would know."
I couldn't help laughing, though really her suggestion wasn't so fantastic as it may sound, for I know a man who did that very trick in somewhat similar circumstances; but her earnestness combined with the childlike guile on her face was comic.
"It would be too long a job to paint the car before we could be spotted," I said. "I think we must just hope for the best, and show a bold face. I shouldn't be surprised if we'd get through all right somehow. Perhaps, if there was much money in your aunt's purse, miss, the peasants would prefer keeping their mouths shut and sticking to that than mixing themselves up with the police and perhaps losing what they might have had, like the dog with his meat in the fable."
"There were about a hundred francs in my purse," announced Aunt Mary.
"If they do catch us, what then?" the girl asked.
I explained the state of the case as I had argued it out to myself.
"Oh, well," sighed Miss Randolph, "I suppose we can't do better than take your advice, but this isn't a nice adventure. I do hate feeling guilty-like an escaping criminal, with every hand against me. And Iloathesuspense; I always want to know the worst. When shall we be sure what the peasants have made up their minds to do?"
"Well," I said, "in less than an hour, if all goes well, we ought to be at theoctroistation outside Carcassonne, and if we are 'wanted' by the police we shall know it fast enough, because they will-er-try to stop us there."
"Then I hope allwon'tgo well," moaned Miss Randolph. She who had been so brave when forty peasants threatened us with words, stones, and even knives, was crushed under the vague menace of the law. "If only we could arrive after dark we might flash through before theoctroipeople knew.Let'sarrive after dark," she exclaimed eagerly. "It's getting on towards four now. Let's stop-since we've been perfectly certain for ages that no one was attempting to follow us-and-and deliberately have tea by the roadside. If we do that we can easily pass the time, so as not to arrive at theoctroiuntil half-past five, when it will be dark. It's moonlight, but the moon doesn't rise now till six or after."
"We could do that certainly" I said, "and wemight get through without being nabbed. If we succeed, we might rush on through Carcassonne, instead of stopping there to-night; for the farther away we get and the more towns we can say we've passed through without being detained, the better for our chances of ultimate escape."
"But I don't want to miss Carcassonne," she objected. "You've told me so much about the place that I've been looking forward to it more than to almost anything else."
So had I, if the truth were known, but I had looked forward to visiting Carcassonne with her before I had "drunk and seen the spider." In other words, before Mr. Payne had joined our party. However, I couldn't bear to have her disappointed, for his fault, too; besides, I'm vain enough to like hearing from her lips the flattering words, "Brown, you are so resourceful!" Therefore I stirred up my brains in the effort to be resourceful now.
"We might hide the car in Carcassonne if we could once get in," I mysteriously suggested; "then you could steal up on foot to thecitéby moonlight, and when you'd had your fill of sight-seeing steal back to the car again and make a rush for it."
"Splendid!" cried Miss Randolph, clapping her hands. Behold, I had made a hit!
The car was stopped, the tea-basket got out, and who so indispensable as the late despised Brown? Brown it was who went to a cottage hard by and procured drinking-water, since, not expecting to stop, we had come out unprovided. Brown it was who saved the methylated spirit from upsetting, andBrown was rewarded presently with an excellent cup of tea, into which Miss Randolph had dropped two lumps of sugar with her own blessed little pink-tipped fingers. As a matter of fact, in ordinary circumstances sugar in tea is medicinal to my taste; but when that angel sat with a lump between her fingers asking how many I would have, though she had just let Jimmy Sherlock put in his own, I would have said half a dozen, if that would have left any over for her. And if the taste was medicinal, why, it had a curative effect on my injured feelings.
Refreshed, invigorated by more than tea, I felt ready for anything. Darkness was falling, but I didn't light the lamps. The road was empty, a torch of dusky red blazing along the west. We started, going cautiously; our tongues silent, our eyes alert. By-and-by, from afar off, we caught the twinkle of low-set, yellow lights. We were coming to the neighbourhood of theoctroiLuckily it was cold; the door and windows of the house would certainly be shut, unless the men were engaged in transacting business in the road. I now hurriedly explained to Miss Randolph the exact method I meant to adopt, and the word was passed round to be "mum." While the tea-things were being packed away, a short time ago, I had well oiled the wheels and chains; the car moved as silently as a bat, except for the chuff! chuff! of the motor. About a hundred yards from the lights I put on speed, and when we had begun to scud along like a ship with all sails set, I took out the clutch and let the motor run free. By this time we were within thirty yards of a building which Inow felt certain was theoctroiThe car, which had been going extremely fast, dashed on, coasting past the little lighted house by its own impetus. Not a sound, not a creak of a wheel, not the grating of a chain.
On we sped for full forty yards past theoctroibefore we lost speed, and I had to slip in the clutch.
"Oh,Brown!" breathed my Goddess ecstatically. Just that, and no more. But if I had been Jack Winston and asked her to marry me at this moment, I believe she would have said "yes," in sheer exuberance of grateful bliss.
So far, so good, but we were not yet out of the wood. We drove quietly on into the town, expecting every moment to be challenged for not lighting our lamps, though we were within our rights, really, dark as it was, for it was not yet an hour after sunset. But nothing happened; not even a dog barked. We crossed the high bridge spanning the Aude, and the oldcité, which we had come to see, loomed black against the dusky sky. No one molested us; no fierygendarmeleaped from the shadows commanding us to stop. My small trumps were taking all the tricks, but I had a big one still in my hand. We were now-having crossed the bridge and left the new town behind us-in a comparatively deserted region.
"My idea," I said quietly to Miss Randolph, "is to drive the car into some dark, back street, far from the ken of thegendarmeIt is six o'clock. People are sitting down to dinner. That is in our favour. I shall, if possible, find a place where the car may stand for several hours without being remarked,while your visit is paid to thecité. Here, now, is the very place!" I broke short my disquisition to remark; for as I elaborated my plan, driving very slowly, we had arrived before a dingy mews with a waggon standing, shafts down, on the cobbles. I turned in and stopped both car and motor.
"This shelter might have been made for us," I said, beginning to find a good deal of pleasure in the situation. "The only difficulty is" (out with my big trump) "that of course someone must stay with the car. It is my place, miss, to do so. But, unfortunately, it is after hours for showing the ramparts, the interior of the towers, the dungeons, and so on, which are really the attractions of the wonderful, old restored mediæval city. I have been here before. I know thegardien, and might, if I were in the party, induce him to make an exception in your favour. Still, as it is, the best I can do will be to write a note and ask him to take you through."
Jimmy laughed, or I should say, chortled. "I should think abanknotewould appeal to thegardien'sintelligence better than any other kind," said he, "and I will see that he gets it."
"I advise you not to do that, sir," I remarked quietly. "Thegardienhere isn't that sort of man at all. He would be mortally offended if you tried to bribe him, and would certainly refuse to do anything for you."
"I'm sure a letter would be of very little use," said Miss Randolph. "I think we must manage to have you with us somehow, Brown. Couldn't we hire a man to look after the car?"
"I shouldn't like to take the risk," said I. "And remember, miss, we are in hiding."
"Idon't want to see the old thing," protested Aunt Mary. "I've gone through so much to-day I feel a thousand years old. I'm not going to climb any hills or see any sights. I want my dinner."
"I think we'd better get on," advised Sherlock. "Not much fun poking about in a lot of old ruins in the dark."
"They're not ruins, and it isn't dark," said Miss Randolph. "Look at the sky! The moon's coming up this minute. If you don't want to see thecité, Jimmy, you might just as well sit here in the car while the rest of us go."
"I shall sit with him," announced Aunt Mary. "And if youmustgo on this wild goose chase, do for pity's sake hurry back, or we shall be frozen."
I began to fear that the scheme would fall through, with so much against it, but Miss Randolph kept to her resolution despite the moving picture of her relative's suffering.
"Oh yes, we will hurry back. We shan't be long," she said cheerfully, "we" meaning herself and her couriermécanicien. "You can't be cold in your furs; it's very early yet; you had a good tea; and Brown and I will whisk you off to some dear little village inn in time for an eight o'clock dinner."
I knew we should do nothing of the kind, but mine not to reason why, mine but to do or die-with her.
I daresay, my dear Montie, that even to you "Carcassonne" expresses nothing in particular. Tothose who have been there the name must, I think, always bring with it an imperishable recollection. Carcassonne is one of the unique places of the world. Years ago-as far back as the Romans, probably much further-there was a fortress on this hill, which commanded one of the chief roads into Spain. Afterwards it was used by the Visigoths, and in the Middle Ages it reached its highest importance under St. Louis. Then gradually it sank again into insignificance, and early last century there was a proposal that the ruins should be destroyed. By this time hardly anyone lived in the old city on the hill, a new and flourishing modern town (laid out in parallelograms) having sprung up in the plain. The demolition of the ancient ruins was prevented by one Cros-Mayrevieille, a native of Carcassonne, who succeeded in whipping up such enthusiasm on behalf of his birthplace that the city was made into amonument historique, and money was granted for its complete reconstruction by Viollet le Duc. A large sum has been spent, great works have been carried out, and the result is one of the most extraordinary feats of restoration in the history of the world.
From afar off this city upon a hill makes a vivid appeal to the imagination. Its great assemblage of towers, walls, and battlements, rising clear-cut and majestic against the sky, suggests at the first glimpse one of those imaginary mediæval cities that Doré loved to draw as illustrations to theContes DrolatiquesSo extraordinary is the apparition of this ancient, silent, fortified city existing in the midst of the railway epoch that one is tempted to think ita mirage, some strange trick of the senses, which, on rubbing the eyes, must disappear. And the nearer one draws, the more vivid does this impression become. Everything perfect, marvellously perfect, yet with no jarring hint of newness. It is well-nigh impossible at any time to tell where the original structure ends and where Viollet le Duc's restoration begins, and on what a grand scale it all is.
By moonlight the effect was really glorious. My Goddess and I walked over a drawbridge and entered the silent, grass-grown streets of the old, old city, where quaint and ancient houses, given up now to the poor, huddle under the protecting walls of the great fortress. We were in a perfect mediæval city, just as it existed in the time of the Crusades. In thus exactly realising the life of a garrisoned fortress of those stirring days, I found much the same dramatic interest I feel on stepping into the silent streets of Pompeii, where the ghosts seem more real than I.
We stopped at the house of thegardien, and I made an excuse for leaving Miss Randolph at a little distance, as I talked to him, reminded him of my last visit, and begged that, as a favour, he would show us about, although it was now "after hours." He is a very good fellow, courteous and intelligent, speaking with the noticeably distinct enunciation which seems to be the mark of all these guardians ofmonuments historiquesin France; and when he understood that there was a lady in the case, he readily consented to oblige, though I suspect he left his supper in the midst. He took off his cap toMiss Randolph's beauty, etherealised by the moon's magic, and we all three started on our expedition. We were conducted into huge, round towers and out upon lofty, commanding battlements, whence we could gaze through a haze of moonlight over a great sweep of country, with here and there the sparkle of a winding river, like a diamond necklace flung down carelessly on a purple cushion. Our guide conscientiously pointed out the stations of the sentries and the guards, the disposition of the towers for mutual defence (each a bowshot from the other), the sally-ports, the secret passages communicating with underground tunnels for revictualling the city in time of siege; and so realistic were our surroundings that I fancied Miss Randolph once or twice actually caught herself listening in vain for the tramp of mailed feet, the hoarse word of command. At all events, I'm sure she forgot for the time being all about Aunt Mary and Jimmy Payne waiting in the car, and I didn't think it incumbent upon me to remind her of their existence or necessities. We lingered long enough in the splendid region of towers, battlements, and ramparts to do them full justice. Then, when I had slipped something of no importance into thegardien'shand, we reluctantly departed, often looking back as we went down the hill. As we left the old city we did not leave it alone. A group of young men and women of a humble class were hurrying down just before us on their way to the new town. We were so near that we couldn't help over-hearing their eager talk of a spectacle they were on their way to see, and judgingfrom the fragments we caught, this was to be a kind of Passion Play. Although I had been at Carcassonne before, I didn't know that such a thing existed in France, or, indeed, outside Oberammergau and a few villages in the Tyrol. Miss Randolph questioned me about it, but I could tell her nothing, and she exclaimed rather shamefacedly, "Oh,howI should love to go!"
"Would you let me take you there, just to look on for a few minutes, miss?" I doubtfully asked.
"I should like it above anything," said she. "Only-we've already kept those poor people waiting too long, I'm afraid."
"This needn't keep them very much longer," said I, "and it may be the last chance you will ever have of seeing such a thing."
"Oh, well, I can't resist," she cried. "We'll go-and I'll take the scolding afterwards."
We did go, following our leaders until we came to a good-sized booth with a crowd round it. The admission was twopence each, but the best seats cost a franc. We went in and found ourselves in a long, canvas room, with sloping seats and a small stage at one end lighted by oil lamps.
The place was dreadfully hot, and smelled strongly of humanity. Presently a bell rang; there was solemn music on a tinkling piano and a young actor, bare-faced and dressed in a white classical dress, took his place near the stage, beginning to recite in a clear, sympathetic voice. He was the choragus, explaining to us what was to happen in the play. The curtain went up, to reveal a tableauof Adam and Eve in very palpable flesh tights, with garlands of fig leaves festooned about their bodies.
Adam, with an elaborate false beard, slept under a tree. Then to the accompaniment of the choragus' explanation a mechanical snake appeared in the branches with an apple in its mouth. An unseen person off the stage made the snake twist and writhe. Eve put out her hand, took the apple, and ate a bit. Adam waking, she pointed to the tree and to the fruit, offering him a piece. He demurred in pantomime, but accepted and swallowed what was left of the apple. Instantly there appeared at the wing an angel with a long, flaxen wig, who threatened the guilty pair with a tinsel sword. They cowered, and then shading their eyes with their hands, were walking sadly away when the curtain fell. It was tableau number one, showing the fall of man.
The audience on the whole received the exhibition with devotional reverence, but a knot of young men openly tittered and jeered, commenting satirically upon the deficiencies in the stage management. Then, with more music, began the scenes from the New Testament. One was rather pretty, introducing the woman at the well, Christ being impersonated by a sweet-faced young man in white, with a light brown wig and beard. The girl who played the Virgin was not more than twenty, and had a serene prettiness, with an air of grave modesty, which were very attractive. She wore her own long hair falling like a mantle over her dark dress, as far down as the knees.
Each scene lasted perhaps five minutes, the characters on the stage speaking no word, but openingtheir mouths and moving their bodies in time with the recitation of the choragus. We had the betrayal in the garden, the trial before Pilate, the scourging, the crucifixion, and the resurrection, all given with feeling and surprising dignity, and in the crucifixion scene, with pathos. Most of the women in the audience were in tears, their compassion spending itself noticeably more upon the Virgin's sorrow than upon her Son's agony; and all through the representation the same irreverent knot of scoffers continued to laugh, to whistle, to mimic. From many parts of the tent there were indignant cries of "Shame!" and "Silence!" but the disturbers went on to the end, quite regardless of good taste and the pious feelings of the majority.
I heard whispers which informed us that this company of players had no repertoire; such a thing they would have considered sacrilegious, but they travelled all over France in caravans, carrying their own scenery and costumes. We dared not stay till the very end of the performance, but had to get up and steal quietly out, with Aunt Mary heavy on our consciences.
I believe poor little Miss Randolph really was afraid of that scolding she had prophesied. But behold, vice was its own reward, and the enemy was delivered into our hands. We arrived at the mews, and there was the car; but there was not Aunt Mary nor yet Sherlock-Fauntleroy. In their place, curled up in thetonneau, reclined a callow French youth, comfortably snoozing, with his coat-collar turned up to his ears. We roused him, learned that he hadbeen caughten passantand hired at the rate of two francs an hour to await the return of a lady and gentleman; also that he had been in his present position for nearly an hour. One lady and gentleman seemed to his mind as good as another, for when offered a five-franc piece he showed no hesitation in delivering up his charge to us, although, for all he could tell, we might have been the rankest of rank impostors. After the departure of this faithless guardian, Miss Randolph and I sat enthroned in the car for some twenty minutes before Aunt Mary and Jimmy came speeding round the corner of the mews. They brought with them an atmosphere of warmth and good cheer, and at first sniff it was evident that they had dined where dining in both solid and liquid branches was a fine art.
In my part of servant I was not "on" in the ensuing comedy; but I listened "in the wings," and chuckled inwardly. Well did Miss Randolph fill the rôle of injured virtue which she had taken up at such short notice. Her surprise that Aunt Mary and Jimmy could have been capable of betraying her trust in them, that they should have gone off and left a valuable car, which wasn't even hers, to the tender mercies of a stupid little boy, a perfect stranger, was bravely done. It was represented as a miracle that the Napier and everything in it had not been stolen during their absence; and the good dinner the culprits had enjoyed at the neighbouring hotel could not fortify them against the blighting sense of their own depravity so vividly brought home.
Not a reproach for us; all the wind had been takenout of their sails. A sadder and wiser Jimmy and Aunt Mary meekly allowed themselves to be driven on through the cold moonlight, with distant gleams of towered towns, to Narbonne, where I am writing to you, after having dined and cleaned the car. Our hotel is not an ideal one; yet on my hard pillow my head, I ween, will lie easier than on a downy one last night. We arrived late, and will leave early, to lessen the chances of being pounced upon by the clutches of the law. But I begin to hope that, after all, those peasants decided to let well alone, and that we shall escape scatheless.
When I was a little boy we used to have honey in red-brown earthenware pots labelled "Finest Narbonne Honey," and for years the place figured in my imagination as a smiling region of brilliant flowers. But the disillusioning reality is a dusty, rather noisy, very commercial town, paved with stones the most abominable; and between Carcassonne and here the roads grow more abominable with every kilometre. I am tired, but not unhappy; and so, good night.
Your fraudulent friend,Brown-Winston.
Hotel du Louvre, Marseilles,December 18.
My dear Montie,
We have just been passing through some of the most interesting parts of France, therefore in the world, and I have derived a certain rarefied enjoyment from it all, as I should have been only half a man not to do. But Brown stock has gone down a little since Carcassonne, why, I know not, though I suspect; and there is depression, if not panic in the market. Jimmy, having made his peace and promised caution, has again been promoted to the post of driver, and from the Jehu point of view I must confess that during a large part of the journey he has covered himself with as much credit as dust. This is saying a good deal, for, owing to the slight rainfalls in these southern departments, the roads are often buried inches deep under a coating of grey, pungent dust, enveloping all passing vehicles in a noisome cloud. They have also, set in their surface at irregular intervals, large pans or dishes with perpendicular walls from an inch to three inches in depth. These dishes being concealed by the all-pervading dust, it is impossible-at least for a JimmyPayne-to know where they are until the wheels bump into them. Sometimes one of our wheels would drop in, sometimes all four. You may imagine the strain of this sort of work upon the tyres, frame, and springs. But in a whole day's run of a hundred and thirty miles we punctured only one tyre, which I mended in fifteen minutes.
Béziers, seen from a distance, set strikingly upon a hill, looked an imposing town, but turned out to be an ordinary and dirty place when we came to ascend its long, winding streets. Beyond, we ran for a while along the edge of a great lagoon, and knew, though we could not see it, that the Mediterranean lay close at our right hand.
At Montpellier we did not stop, and I delivered no lecture on the subject of the gorgeous, all-conquering Duchess, as I might have been tempted to do if we'd had no addition to our party. It's a large, bright, and stately town, very liveable-looking; but nothing was said about lingering, though there are some things worth seeing. We had an impressive entrance into the ancient city of Nîmes, running in by early moonlight, across a great, open plain, under a spacious, purpling dome of sky, the sun dying in carmine behind us, the evening star a big, flashing diamond in the moon-paled east. The old Roman amphitheatre stood up darkly and nobly in the silver twilight; but we passed on to our hotel, the programme evidently being to satisfy the senses at the expense of the soul. They do one very well at the hotel in Nîmes, but I looked forward hopefully to a request to play courier among the sights of the dearold town next morning. It did not come, however. The two ladies went forth with Jimmy, and as I saw them go I could but acknowledge my rival to be a personable fellow. Sherlock Holmes and Little Lord Fauntleroy were both personable fellows in their way, and it is useless to deny Jimmy's possession of the picked attributes of each.
For some reason the word seems to have gone forth that we are to hurry on to Cannes. In the circumstances I am inclined to change my mind, and instead of wishing my dear mother to have departed before our arrival, I'm not sure it wouldn't be wiser to hope that she'll still be there. Miss Randolph "hasn't decided what she'll do after reaching the Riviera." I can't help feeling that Jimmy Sherlock has succeeded in getting in some deadly work of a mysterious nature. It's on the cards that I may find at Cannes or Nice that the trip is finished, and Brown is finished too. Then, as I can't and won't part from my Goddess without a Titanic struggle, I might find it convenient to tell my mother all, throw myself on her mercy, and get her to intercede with Miss Randolph for me. You may argue that her views regarding the fair Barrow are likely to militate against co-operation in this new direction; but I can be eloquent on occasion, and even a mother must see that a Barrow is nothing beside a Goddess.
Altogether, I am nervous. The future looks wobbly, and it is not a pleasant sensation to feel that one is being secretly undermined. Jimmy had better look out, though. The first shadow of proof I get that he's breaking his half of the bargain heshall learn that even achauffeurwill turn. And I look upon Cannes, somehow, as the turning-point in more senses of the word than one.
But to our muttons. No pleasant dallying for me in beautiful old Nîmes or Arles, either one of which would repay weeks of lingering. What dallying there was, Jimmy got-confound him!-and my only joy was in his hatred of early rising. They had him up at an unearthly hour for a glimpse of the amphitheatre and the Maison Carrée at Nîmes, and by nine we were on the road to Arles, Payne driving with creditable caution. We crossed the Rhone and completed the eighteen flat miles in little more than thirty minutes. When we arrived at the end of this time in the astonishing little town of Arles, halting in a diminutive square with two great pillars of granite and a superb Corinthian pediment (dating from Roman occupation) built into the walls of modern houses, Miss Randolph announced that they would walk about for half an hour and look at the antiquities. "Half an hour!" I couldn't help echoing; "why, Arles is one of the most interesting places in France. It is an open-air museum."
"I know," said she, looking up at me with an odd expression which I would have given many a bright sovereign for the skill to read. "But maybe I shall have a chance to see it some other time, and the others don't care much for antiquities or architecture. We reallymusthurry as fast as possible to Cannes."
Now, why-why? What is to happen at Cannes? Is Jimmy's loathly hand in this? Or-blessed thought!-is all sight-seeing for her, as well as forme, poisoned by his society? Is she regretting her rash generosity in promising to carry him to the Riviera (to say nothing ofLord Lane!) and is she panting to rid herself of him? I daren't hope it. But write me your deduction. Perhaps in your enforced inaction at Davos it may amuse you to piece together a theory and account for the actions of certain persons in France, whom possibly you know better than if you had ever met them.
While the three went off to bolt in one bite such delicate morsels as the sculptured porch of the cathedral of St. Trophinus and the Roman theatre I gloomily played Casabianca by the car, Ixion at the wheel, or what you will. I waited their return before the hotel, and no sooner did they come back, at the end of their stingy half-hour, than we started, taking the road across the great plain of La Crau towards Salon.
A most extraordinary region that plain of La Crau. It is as flat as a pancake, only far away to the north one sees a range of brown, stony mountains. Formerly it was a forbidding, stony desert, the dumping-place for every pebble and boulder brought down by the Rhone and the Durance. But all over the vast wilderness there has been carried out a wonderful system of irrigation, and now it yields sweet herbage for sheep, while figs, mulberries, and cypresses are dotted in green oases. The surface of the land is thickly veined with the beneficent little canals, carrying life-giving water from the Canal de Craponne, which has its origin at La Roque, on the Durance.
Across this vast plain we raced towards Salon, along a road straight as if drawn by a ruler, and bordered by small poplars standing shoulder to shoulder like trees in a child's box of toys. We met no other vehicles; we seemed to have the world to ourselves; but once, far along the road, we spied a black dot which seemed to come towards us with incredible speed, growing larger as it came. In less time than it takes to write we saw that it was an enormous racing automobile, probably undergoing a test of speed. We were running at our own highest pace, perhaps forty-five miles an hour; the thing approaching us was coming at seventy or more. You may imagine the rush of air as we passed each other. One glimpse we had of a masked automobilist like a figure of death in an Albert Dürer cartoon, or the familiar of a Vehmgericht, and then we were gasping in the vortex of air caused by the speed of the gigantic car. Almost before we could turn our heads it was a black dot again on the horizon. Perhaps it was the great Fournier himself.
Beyond Salon the road becomes interestinglyaccidentée. One climbs among the mountains which fold Marseilles in their encircling arms, and has spacious views over the great Etang de Berre to the glittering Mediterranean. The Napier crested the hills without faltering, and from the top we had a long run down (over badpavéat the last) into the lively, noisy streets of gay Marseilles, Payne guiding the car very decently over intricate tram lines, finally turning across the pavement to circle into the white, airy court of a large hotel. When my passengershad got down I drove the car to agarageand went quietly off to another hotel, where, warned by past experience at Pau, I entered myself in the register modestly as James Brown.
Now I shall hurl at your devoted and friendly head this enormous letter, and presently shall begin another to tell of the Further Adventures on the Riviera of
Your much-enduring Friend,The Amateur Chauffeur.
Grand Hotel, Toulon,December 20.
My Wingless Angel,
It's lucky your poor dear hair is getting conspicuous by its absence, or it would stand up on end, I don't doubt, when you read a few lines farther. So, you see, even baldness is a blessing in disguise.
I won't keep you in suspense. The worst shall come first; after all that's happened I don't mind such a little thing as an anti-climax in writing to my indulgent and uncritical Dad.
Now for it.
I have deserted Aunt Mary and Jimmy Payne in a gorge. I am alone in a hotel-with Brown. Yet I ask you to suspend judgment; I have not exactly eloped.
It is all Jimmy Payne's fault.
I wired you yesterday from Marseilles, because I hadn't written since my second letter from Pau, when I told you how Aunt Mary had persuaded me that it would be perfectly caddish not to invite Jimmy to drive with us to the Riviera, as his car was there and he was going that way. I felt in my bones to an almost rheumatic extent that to ask him would be a big mistake; still, in a weak moment Iconsented, when Jimmy had been particularly nice and had just paid you a whole heap of compliments. I lay awake nearly all night afterwards, thinking whether 'twere nobler in the mind of Molly to hurt Brown's feelings or Jimmy's, since injury must be dealt to one. Finally, I tossed up for it in the sanctity of my chamber. Heads, Brown drives; tails, Jimmy; and it was tails. Well, I'd vowed that should settle it, so I wouldn't go back on myself; and, anyhow, Jimmy was the guest, so that French copper had the rights of it. I did my best to make all straight with the Lightning Conductor, who behaved like the trump he is.
Jimmy had spared no pains or expense in advertising himself as an expert driver, nevertheless I knew him well enough not to be surprised at finding out he didn't know much more than I did. I soon saw that, though the first day everything went well enough. The second day he nearly landed us in a dreadful scrape with some peasants, but since Brown brought us safely through, I won't tell tales out of school, especially as the tables were rather turned on the poor fellow at Carcassonne-the most splendid place. I send you with this a little book all about it, full of pictures, and you are to be sure to read it. I was rather sorry for Jimmy afterwards; he was so humble, and besides, he took a cold in his head waiting in the car while I went sight-seeing. He promised to be very prudent if I would only trust him again, and cleverly took my mind off his late misdeeds by exciting my curiosity. At breakfast in Narbonne, where we'd unexpectedly stayed thenight, he hinted darkly of most exciting events in which we were intimately concerned, which would in all probability take place at Cannes, if we could only arrive there soon enough. I couldn't get him to tell me what they were, but I fancy Aunt Mary is at least partly in his confidence. She wouldn't betray him, but she assured me that to miss the treat in store for us would mean lasting regret. And she was bursting with importance and mystery. Now I don't believe much in Jimmy's show; nothing of his ever does come off, except his hat when he drives. Still, a little of Jimmy's society goes a long way in the intimate association of a motoring journey; what itwouldbe in married life I don't know and don't want to know; and as I too began to think I shouldn't be sorry to get to the Riviera, I consented to be whirled through some lovely places, just to satisfy Aunt Mary and Jimmy's craving for haste, and lack of love for ancient architecture.
We arrived at Marseilles, Jimmy doing well. Iwouldsee something of the place, for I was true to my Monte Cristo, and insisted upon having a glimpse of the Château d'If. We got in at night, and stayed at a delightful hotel. Early in the morning I was up, and rather than I should take Brown as courier, Jimmy (who resents Brown) was up early too. We had breakfast together-for Aunt Mary stayed in bed-and went out to walk. But it wasn't like going about with the Lightning Conductor, who knows everything and has been everywhere before. We had to inquire our way every minute, and shouldn't have known which things were worthseeing if Monsieur Rathgeb, the landlord, hadn't told us to be sure and go up the hill of Notre Dame de la Garde for the view; so we went up in a lift, and it was glorious. Some soldiers marching on a green boulevard below looked like tiny black-beetles, and the music of their bugle band came floating faintly to us like sounds heard through a gramophone. The Ile d'If and all the others were splendid from there, and I would have liked to stay a long time, if Jimmy hadn't begun to be tiresome and harangue me about the confidential way in which I treat Brown. "Social distinctions," said he didactically, "are the bulwarks of society." Ha, ha! I couldn't help laughing-could you in my place? I told him I thought he would make a fortune as a lecturer, but lectures weren't much in my line; and I asked if he'd ever read Ibsen'sPillars of Society, which of course he hadn't. Then we went down in the lift, and back to the hotel for Aunt Mary, who naturally wanted to shop; and by the time she had finished buying veils and cold cream it was time for lunch, which we had in one of the most charming restaurants I was ever in, on the Corniche Road. I don't care so very much about good things to eat; but I do think that oysters,langouste à l'Américaine,bouillabaisse à la Provençale, perfectly cooked and served, and mixed with a heavenly view, may be something to rave about. Oh, there's a lot to see and do in Marseilles, I assure you, Dad, though one's friends never seem to tell you much about it; and it was three o'clock in the afternoon before I would consent to be torn away. Of course, so far souththe daylight lingers long; still, we knew we had but an hour and a half more of it when we started. There had been a shower of rain while Aunt Mary and I were packing, and we had not been out of the hotel many minutes when we had a surprise.
Jimmy was driving along a paved street, slimy with fresh mud, and confusing with the dash and clash of electric street cars, which Jimmy is English enough to call "trams." He tried to pass one on the off side, but just as he was getting ahead of it another huge car came whizzing along from the opposite direction. I didn't say a word. I just "sat tight," but I had the queerest feeling in my feet as if I wanted to jump or do something. It looked as if we were going to be pinched right between the two, and I'd have given a good deal if Brown had been at the helm, for I would have been sure that somehow he'd contrive to get us through all right. But Jimmy lost his head-and indeed there are only a few men who wouldn't, for the drivers of both cars were furiously clanging their bells, and the whole world seemed to be nothing but noise, noise, and great moving things coming every way at once. He jammed on the brakes suddenly, which was just what Brown in thetonneauwas trying to warn him not to do, and before I knew what had happened our automobile waltzed round on the road with a slippery sort of slide, the way your foot does when you step on ice under snow.
I thought we were finished, and I'm afraid I shut my eyes. "Just like a girl!" O yes, thank you; I know that; but I didn't know it or anything else at that minute. There was loud shouting and swearing,then a bump, a noise of splintering wood, another bump, and we were still alive and unhurt, with a buzz of voices round us-quiteunkindvoices some of them, though I never felt more as if I wanted kindness. It occurred to me to open my eyes, and I found that we had brought up against the curbstone, while one of our mud-guards had been smashed by the iron rail of the electric street car, now stationary. Our Napier had turned completely round. The conductor of the tram was scrutinising his scratched rail and saying things; but Brown, who had jumped out to examine into our damage, slyly slipped something that looked like a five-franc piece into his hand. This reminds me, I must pay Brown back; he can't refuse such a thing as that, though it seems he has taken a sort of pledge against accepting tips in his professional career. Funny, isn't it? "For a touch of new paint," I heard him murmur to the conductor in his nice French, and that man must have been in a great hurry to try the effect of the "touch," for no sooner did the coin change hands than he stopped scolding, and away buzzed the big electric bumble-bee.
"Formercy'ssake, what was it that happened?" gasped Aunt Mary.
"Side-slip, miss," said Brown in a tone dry enough to turn the mud to dust, "from putting on the brakes too quickly. A driver can't be too careful on a surface like this." Which was one for Jimmy.
The poor fellow took it with outward meekness, though I saw his eyes give a flash-and, do you know, our blond Jimmy can look quite malevolent!He didn't speak to Brown, but turned to me, and said the side-slip wasn't really his fault at all; it might happen to anybody in greasy weather; but he would be still more cautious now than before. I didn't like to humiliate a guest by superseding him with a servant, capable as the servant is, so I said that I hoped hewouldbe very careful, and we started on again, somewhat chastened in our mood, driving slowly, slowly, through interminable suburbs to a place called Aubagne.
There was a splendid sunset after the rain, with a wonderful effect of heavy violet cloud-curtains with jagged gold edges, drawn up to show a clear sky of pale beryl-green; and sharp against the green were cut out purple mountains and white villages that looked like flocks of resting gulls. We were in wild and beautiful country by the time the thickening clouds compelled us to stop and light our two oil-lamps and the huge acetylene Bleriot.
There was a good deal of wind, and Aunt Mary began to shiver as we started on, still going slowly. "Oh dear!" she exclaimed crossly, "we shall never get anywhere to-night if we crawl like this. Surely there's no danger now?"
That was enough for Jimmy. He said that certainly there was no danger now, and never had been. Opening the throttle, he began to tell me anecdotes of a trip he had made with his Panhard over the Stelvio with snow on the ground. If I weren't afraid now of a decent pace, he'd get us into Toulon in no time.
I do hate to have people think I'm afraid, so ofcourse I denied it sharply, and we began to fly down hill. Our lamps seemed to have shut the night down closely all around us. We didn't see much except the road with the light flying along it; but suddenly, circling round a curve, there appeared-dark within the brilliant circle of our Bleriot-a great, unlighted waggon lumbering up the hill we were descending, and on the wrong side of the road.
We were close on to it, and oh, Dad, that was a bad moment! It was made up of lightning-quick impressions and feelings, no reasoning at all. Jimmy was frantically blowing the horn, though it was too late to be of much good. I had a vision of a startled Jack-in-the-box man appearing from the bottom of the waggon to snatch wildly at the reins; the next instant our car waltzed round just as it had in Marseilles, twisted off the road, and, with a loud shriek from Aunt Mary, who had clutched me by the arm, we all pitched headlong into darkness.
It felt as if we were falling for ever so long, just as it does in a dream before you wake up with a great start; but I suppose it really wasn't more than a second. The next thing I knew, I was on my hands and knees among some stones; and evidently I'm vainer than I fancied, for among other thoughts coming one on top of the other, I was glad myfacewasn't hurt. I've always imagined that it must be terrible for a girl to come to herself after an accident and find she had no face.
I scrambled to my feet and began calling to the others. I think I called Brown first, because, you see, he is so quick in emergencies, and he would beready to look after the others. But he didn't speak, and the most awful cold, sick feeling settled down on my heart. "Oh, Brown, Brown!" I heard myself crying, just as you hear yourself in a nightmare, and it hardly seemed more real than that. Into the midst of my calling Aunt Mary's voice mingled, and I was thankful, for it didn't sound as if she were much hurt.
Our lamps had gone out, and it was almost pitch dark now, for clouds covered the moon. But there came a glimmer, which kept growing brighter; and looking up I saw a man standing with a lantern held over his head, peering down a steep bank with a look of horror. The same glimmer showed me something else-Brown's face on the ground, white as a stone, his eyes wide open with an unseeing stare. I ran to him, and found that I was pushing Aunt Mary back, as she was trying to get up from somewhere close at hand. She caught at me, and wouldn't let me go by. "Oh dear, oh dear!" she was sobbing, and I begged her to tell me if she were hurt.
"No, thank Heaven! I fell on Brown," she said, "and that saved me."
I could have boxed her ears. One would have thought, to hear her, that he was a sort of fire-escape. I snatched my dress out of her hands, and knelt down beside poor Brown, who was perhaps dead, all through my fault-for I saw now that I ought never to have let Jimmy Payne drive the car. By this time the man with the lantern (it was the carter who had made the trouble for us) had slid down the steep bank, and come straight to where I was kneeling."Ah, mademoiselle, il est mort!" he exclaimed. How I did hate him! I screamed out, "He isn't, he isn't!" but it was only to make myself believe it wasn't true, and I couldn't help crying-big hot tears that splashed right down into Brown's eyes. And I suppose it was their being so hot that woke him up, for he did wake up, and looked straight at me, dazed at first, then sensibly-such a queer effect, the intelligence and brightness taking the place of that frightened stare. The first thing he said was, "Are you hurt?" And I said "No"; and then I discovered that I was holding his hand as fast as ever I could-only think, holding yourchauffeur'shand!-but such a brave, faithfulchauffeur, never thinking of his own face, as I had of mine, but ofme.
That made me laugh and draw back, and we both said something about being glad. And I wanted to help him, but he didn't need any help, and was up like an arrow the next second. And then, for the first time, I saw the car, standing upright with Jimmy Payne, sitting in it, hanging on like grim death to the steering-post, which he was embracing as if he were a monkey on a stick.
Ididlaugh at that-one does laugh more when something dreadful has nearly happened, but not quite, than at any other time, I think-though into the midst of my laugh came a sudden little pain. It was in my left wrist, and it ached hard, one quick throb after another, as if they were in a hurry to get their chance to hurt. But I didn't say anything, for it seemed such a trifle. Brown assured me that he was "right as rain," that he'd only been dazedand perhaps unconscious for a minute through falling on his head. I wondered if he knew about Aunt Mary. But it was too delicate a subject to raise. Anyway, she hadn't a bruise. And wasn't it extraordinary about Jimmy? The car had "fallen on its feet," so to speak, and he had hung on to the steering-post so hard that not only had he kept his seat, but he had wrenched the steering-gear. Brown discovered this in peering into the works by the light of one of our own oil-lamps, relit from the carter's lantern. If the Napier hadn't been a magnificent car it would have been frightfully damaged, although, finding itself compelled to take a twelve-foot jump off the road, it had cleverly chosen comparatively smooth, meadow-like ground to descend upon. Not even a tyre was punctured; no harm whatever appeared to have been done except that, as I said, owing to Jimmy's savage contortions in search of safety, the steering-gear was wrenched.
There's a thing called a worm in steering-gear, it seems, also a rod; and new ones would have to be fitted in ours before we could go on again. When I heard this I felt rather qualmish, for my wrist was aching a good deal, and had begun to swell. Brown and the carter were talking together, and according to them the best thing seemed to be to carry luggage and rugs to the nearest village, Le Beausset, and try to get accommodation there for the night. Brown would go on to Toulon, he said, and try to get new parts for the car, with which he'd come back early in the morning.
Still I didn't say anything about my wrist. AuntMary and I scrambled up the bank, and Brown, Jimmy, and the carter went back and forth for our things. The latter had been going away from Le Beausset, not towards it when the accident happened, but he agreed to turn round and take our luggage on his cart to the village. He made room for Aunt Mary too, sitting on bags and portmanteaus like Marius on the ruins of Carthage, and the rest of us walked, about a mile.
Le Beausset proved to be a tiny place, and at the solitary inn there was but one small bedroom to let, the rest being taken by some rough, selfish-looking commercial travellers, who were having an early dinner in a hot and smellysalle à manger, with every breath of air religiously excluded.
I thought that without being fussy I might draw the general attention to myself. I announced a wrist, and demanded a surgeon lest I had cracked a bone. Brown vanished like a pantomine demon, but returned almost immediately with a long face, and the intelligence that Le Beausset had neither surgeon nor resident doctor. There was no vehicle, not even a bicycle, to be had for love or money at this time of day, but he would make all haste to Toulon and send back a competent man. The worst of it was there might be delay, as it was about ten miles to Toulon. Halfway between Le Beausset and the big town was a small one called Ollioules, and there, it appeared, one could take an electric tram into Toulon; but it was a long way for a doctor to come, and it might be several hours before he could arrive.
"Then I'll go to Toulon with you," said I. "Idon't feel as if I could stand much waiting; the walk will take my mind off the pain, and I can have my wrist attended to the minute I get there."
Instantly Aunt Mary burst into a cataract of objections, and I only dammed the flood (quite in the proper sense of the word, because, like Marjorie Fleming, I was "most unusual calm; I did not give a single damn") by suggesting that, once in Toulon, I might send back a comfortable carriage and engage rooms in a good hotel for us all for the night.
"Well, I can't and won't stay here alone, that's flat," pronounced my dear aunt; and despite all her lectures against "liberty, fraternity, and equality" in my treatment of poor Brown, she was willing to let me go unchaperoned save by him, for the sake of retaining Jimmy Payne's protecting presence herself. As for Jimmy, it was easy to see that he didn't like the idea at all; but he had jarred himself a good deal in his eccentric fall, and evidently funked another tramp. He had limped ostentatiously every step of the way to Le Beausset. Brown was afraid that I wasn't up to the walk, but I assured him it would be much less uncomfortable than indefinite waiting, and I think he saw by my face that I was right. After all our delay it was only half-past five when we set off, and would scarcely have been thoroughly dark if it hadn't been for the clouds which had been boiling up from the west all over the sky.
I had no idea what kind of a walk we were in for when we started, neither had Brown, for he had never been over exactly this part of the world either walking or driving, but only in the train. We hadn'tbeen gone long when we plunged downwards into a deep and winding mountain gorge, the kind of cut-throat place where you'd expect brigands to grow on blackberry bushes. Oh, but it was dark, with only now and then a fitful gleam of moonlight cutting its way through a rent in the inky clouds! Hardly had the word "brigands" crept into my mind with an accompaniment of heart-beats something like the plink! plink! plink! villain entrance-music on the stage, when two indistinct forms loomed out of the blackness before us. A perpendicular wall of rock shot up from the road on one side, and on the other, in some unseen depth below, roared a torrent, which drowned my voice when I whispered to Brown, so I clutched his coat-sleeve instead of speaking.
The two men were chattering loudly in Italian. "Ah,Italianbrigands, worse and worse!" thought I; but Brown said "Good-evening" to them boldly, and they answered as mildly as a pair of lambs, falling behind to let us pass on. I skipped along, expecting at any instant to feel a knife in my back, but the blade did not penetrate any part more vital than my imagination, though the pair hung on our footsteps till we emerged from the mountain defile into the town of Ollioules.
I never knew what an attractive object an electric tram could be, until I saw one there awaiting our convenience, glittering with hospitable light. We jumped in, and were flashed into Toulon in no time, stopping close to the best hotel. We found that they could accommodate our party, but Brown quite took the upper hand; wouldn't allow me to stop andtalk, had me swept off to a very nice room, and said that not only would he see about a surgeon for me, but would arrange for a carriage to drive back for Aunt Mary and Jimmy.
Till we got into the electric car at Ollioules I hadn't noticed in the dark that Brown was carrying anything. But he put down on the car seat quite a heavy bag of mine and a sort of big dressing-case of his own, which is his only baggage on the automobile. "Whydidyou lug all that?" I exclaimed. "Oh, I thought you might need something before the others arrived," said he, "and I didn't like to trouble them to look after mine." Wasn't he thoughtful? And I was glad to have my bag-without waiting. But just think of the state of that poor fellow's muscles!
It was a quarter to seven when I got into my rooms at the hotel, and ten minutes later the doctor arrived. If he had had bad news to give me about my wrist, I shouldn't have written the tale of this adventure so frankly; but I can leave a good impression on your mind in the end by telling you that all's well with your "one fair daughter." It's a sprain, no worse; and the stuff which the clever man prescribed has soothed the pain wonderfully. I'm so thankful it's my left wrist, not the right; and so ought you to be, or you would have to do without letters. This is the time when I miss my maid; but a dear littlefemme de chambreof the hotel helped me dress, and it is wonderful how well you can get on with only one hand.
Now I've something else to break to you, Dad.
The hotel was rather full, and all the private sitting rooms were gone, otherwise I might have had dinner upstairs; but I drew the line at dining abjectly in a bedroom. Still, I didn't quite like the idea of sailing into a bigsalle à manger, alone, with a bound-up wrist, and perhaps making an exhibition of myself cutting up meat in a one-handed way. So before Brown went to call the doctor I just said to him casually that it would be an accommodation if he would dine in thesalle à mangerwith me this once. He looked surprised, and seemed to hesitate a little before he said that he would do so with pleasure, if I thought it best. I was almost sorry I'd asked, but I wouldn't go back; and, anyhow, what elsecouldI have done? He is extraordinarily gentlemanly in his looks and manner, and never takes the least advantage; so I hope you'll agree with me that of two evils I chose the less. And when I made the arrangement I supposed Aunt Mary and Jimmy would be arriving before bedtime, so that I should only be a lone, unprotected female for a few hours. But we hadn't been in the hotel five minutes before it came on to rain again, a perfect deluge this time, with thunder and lightning; and while the nicefemme de chambrewas helping me into a ducky little lace waist which was in the bag Brown had carried, to my great surprise a telegram was brought to my door. At first I thought there must be a mistake, but it really was for me. Brown had mentioned the name of the best hotel in Toulon, where we would try to get rooms before he and I left the others at Le Beausset; and the telegram was from Aunt Mary."Don't send carriage. Prefer stay here to driving in such storm. Feel sure you are safe without us."